Blog Road Test: Keyboard Hygiene Unleashed

This is the first of a regular series for me, a road test of a new blog topic idea for ITToolbox! This week I will be road testing a new blog concept on keyboard hygiene unleashed.

So get out your clipboard, your tape measure and a magnifying glass and give this blog a road test and fill in the poll question at the bottom.

Keyboard Hygiene Unleashed

Welcome to the new keyboard hygiene blog. I hope to take a balanced and levelheaded approach to the complex and thought provoking topic of keyboard hygiene. First, a warning:

One in ten children will suffer a playground accident, most of those children will use a keyboard in the days leading up to that accident. Is there a link? Probably not. In hindsight the warning may have been a bit of overkill.

Look down at your keyboard. Have a real close look. Get your face right close. You know how filthy that thing is? Right now I am typing this blog with an eleven foot pole because I would touch my keyboard with a ten foot pole. There are electomites living in your keyboard, feeding off your fingerprints, stealing your identity and giving birth to spyware.

Over the coming years you can turn to this blog to keep your keyboard and your fingers healthy.

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The single most important part of keyboard hygiene is keeping your keyboard hygienic. I have spent many years travelling the world and learning different and varied ways of cleaning keyboards, mostly in airports, in fact I could have just travelled to the same airport every day for two weeks and learnt the same things and saved myself a lot of money. I would like to share a lifetime of wisdom on keyboard hygiene, unfortunately I only have enough wisdom to fit in a list of 10 tips.

10 Tips for Better Keyboard Hygiene

1) Eat low fat chips while typing. This will lower the cholesterole of your keyboard.

2) At work paint your keyboard the same colour as the office carpet and at night leave it lying on the ground so the cleaners vacuum it.

3) Once all the letters have worn off your keys it is time to upgrade your laptop.

4) Alcohol is a great item to have on hand for keeping your keyboard clean. I usually finish off a six pack after which the keyboard cleaning goes swimmingly.

5) If you spill water or coffee on your keyboard drill a hole in the bottom so the liquid can seep out.

6) Immdiatly rpair kys that stick to avoid typing rrors.

7) If you spill food or drink on your keyboard and you are in a cyber cafe make sure you lick it clean, do not leave it messy for other users. Show some goddam consideration.

8) If you have worn out the backspace key on your keyboard you really need to take some typing lessons.

9) If you spill snake venom on your keyboard do not try and suck it out, that is medical quackery. You are better off administering your keyboard with a dose of leeches.

10) To properly clean unscrew base and remove top, pop out each key, carefully remove the keyboard card, if you see a golden ticket underneath go to the keyboard factory and undergo a series of challenges to gain control of the factory. Do not touch the oompa loompas, those little guys will really mess you right up.

Did you know!The QWERTY keyboard layout was patented by Christopher Scholes in 1873. It is a common misconception that the keys were placed in a specific order to make the word QWERTY easier to spell. Not to mention the word ZXCV and the popular UIOP. In fact the order of the keys is a code that reveals a secret message. If you were to rearrange the keys on a QWERTY keyboard they would spell "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". Thought provoking isn't it?

Now it is time to vote on this blog road test. What do you think? Could it be a future superstar ITToolbox blog?

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5 Comments

Vince,
Man, I can't help it but you're totally hilarious man. (you got my whole team laughing out loud on your "interview").
Congrats on the new blog! I stumbled across it from the "recent entries" page and was surprised to know that you started a new blog.
Man, we need guys like you on the lighter side!
Keep it going man!
GPA

Great list! Love your new blog!
Just a few comments:
#5 isn't valid. Most keyboards have a plastic thing that separates the insides with the outside keys (with some sort of ridging around the plunger). So unless you spill your six pack on the keyboard, liquids don't hurt the keyboard (just turn over keyboard and empty it out - make sure its not on top of your computer case - that's another story of liquids in the wrong spot!), but anything other than water could make things sticky and start growing under the keys.
#8 I know how to type and can type fast enough that I can also correct erros with the backspace key faster than most people type without errors. I actually know when I've typed the wrong key! It comes with having a data entry job during college.

I loved the 10 tips on keyboard hygiene. As a business traveler, I not only use my keyboard cleaning solution (in personal applicator size) for keyboards, telephone handsets and toilet seats. Although I found the toilet seats in Heathrow far cleaner than BT's public telephones. Sept 18-23 is computer cleaning week...take a bath with your keyboard, or leave you laptop on top of your car when you go through the car wash.

Hey i know your post is semi serious but this can be a real problem. People do need to be better educated in this regard.

Dirty filthy little things, PC and laptops!

I can testify to the fact that IT guys n gals do get sick, sometimes very sick. I have been an IT Support monkey for about 15 years and I have been sick many times directly, I know because of filthy PCs and filthy users.

I needed HEP vaccines after one incident. I have seen every kind of bodily out put and detritus on keyboards, mice, screens, and the list goes on.

We once had the contents of a "LAB mini vac" tested we found many narcotics + legal drugs + new drugs ;-), other chemicals, heavy metals! diseases bacteria virus. not to mention about 20-50 grams of dust per average PC. Not to mention snot, pubes blood, other stuff, faecal material, urine, saliva, puss, ear wax, vomit, phlegm, moulds, on one pc we found a slimy fungus under the KB, on a another we found flea eggs and body lice, the list of bacteria and other bugs is immense and frightening. We were told by the lab that we would be safer falling in to a septic tank then being exposed to this. This was only a sample of the PCS.

I now manage a team of IT staff, and we make them wear gloves and a mask when working on a machine, and have the PCs cleaned by experts every 3 months. This has saved the company a fortune and not just my department. Our days lost to absenteeism have been reduced by about 25% gaining us about 70% cash return on the cost of the new process, and an increase of productivity inline but slightly above with the drop in absences. The only thing that changed was tighter hygiene on desktop areas. (we do have many hot desks)

Plus we have had less hardware failure and replaced much less mice, keyboards and internals like power supplies to due failure. Users have reported better control of mice IE: no "stick ionâ€ The work areas also look cleaner no snotty keyboards on view. The noise levels has even reduced.

The company we hire is small and fast they donâ€™t interfere with the work they generally come in on the weekends and by Monday the staff see the difference.

I have begun discussions with our insurers to try to see if our risk has been reduced as most office fires happen because of dirty dusty or greasy PCs sitting on the floor sucking up fire hazards. I also had a Â£50,000 server 3 months old that burnt out because a spider yes little spider has made a home in it. So believe me proper house keeping of IT gear is essential in any serious enterprise. It makes money back so its not a real cost. The cleaners can prevent things like clod outbreaks and they often spot other problems. We paid our guys extra to install a memory upgrade at the same time.

You are right on in your comments. We sell a sealed hygienic keyboard (and mice) to Medical & Industrial companies.ALL SCHOOLS/libraries should have these devices and have them disinfected several times a day. THis can be done by spraying or immersing them in a bleach/water solution.Tom

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One day I was watching TV and I thought that maybe, just maybe, blogs were more important than TV. Maybe I could learn more ...
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One day I was watching TV and I thought that maybe, just maybe, blogs were more important than TV. Maybe I could learn more reading blogs than by watching TV. I was dubious. How could anything beat TV? As a dedicated couch potato I had to find out. So here I am, I have transformed from the couch potato to the blog potato. I am parked on the couch with a laptop and wireless card and a driving ambition to get myself a beer from the frigde before I finish the rest of this sentence... and a driving ambition to find out once and for all whether blogging is all it is cracked up to be.
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